McGrady Signs 1 Year Deal Per The DetNews

LOL - either that or one veteran like McGrady. I can see how the Pistons would be reluctant to trade Tay with "only" our 3 rookies from last season playing behind him.

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That makes some sense. Although you can basically always get a veteran SF, so you'd think we'd just take the best Tay deal if we wanted to trade him. Plus trading him doesn't fix our biggest issue, Rip & Ben.

This does fit Joe's rebuilding while staying competitive plan. Also known around NBA circles as "The Blueprint to Mediocrity". I'd be more willing to blame this on the ownership situation if I didn't think Joe actually thought this was possible.

Well I hope T-Mac resurrects his career here, even though I see absolutely no long term benefits from this move for the team.

Now, pretty obviously, the trade watch for Rip and/or Tay goes into full effect. The roster is incredibly gummed up, UNLESS the team starts playing a racehorse BB style - something we ought to be very well suited to with two super fast penetrating point guards and with the depth of this current roster. The problem with that is that our two veteran holdovers, Rip and Tay have resisted playing fast racehorse BB whenever they've been in the lineup. I don't think they fit that style.

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Is it possible for NBA teams to run a full court press / full court trap kind of defense? We would have the athletes for it, and we could get a lot of substitutes off the bench if people got tired. If they worked hard at setting good traps and anticipating the defense they might be able to really hurt teams with poor ball-handlers. My question is, are there any poor ball-handlers in the NBA? On a defensive end, if you put a lot of pressure on teams in a full court pressure kind of way, you may have some success, but when you don't a good team can expose it and make you look TERRIBLE.

While the generality that the Pistons are well-stocked on the perimeter rings true, I suspect Dumars has remained somewhat hesitant to trade Prince despite rampant media speculation that he’s been shopping him around. Why? Because Prince is a Swiss Army knife, invaluable at both ends, and there’s nobody who can fill the vacuum his absence would create by himself.
But adding McGrady gives Dumars another piece, a potentially very big one, for the toolbox needed to replace Prince – that is, if it really comes to a deal involving a player as valuable as Prince as the best option for plugging a more glaring hole elsewhere. The Pistons remain high on their three 2009 draft picks, all of them not only capable of playing small forward but probably best suited for that spot. But Jonas Jerebko, pending any further moves, is needed more at power forward right now, and Austin Daye, for all the offensive talent he oozes and the promise he flashed in Las Vegas last month, might not be ready to shoulder a starting job and all that it entails just yet.

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If we trade Rip, this would be a very good signing. Having Stuckey & Gordon start with Bynum & McGrady off the bench is a good backcourt. Much better than Bynum/Gordon off the bench.

Is it possible for NBA teams to run a full court press / full court trap kind of defense? ...

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In a word....NO.

You can use it for a possession or two, but even an average NBA point guard (not including Stuckey) will pick you apart. Calipari tried it with the Celtics when he came up from the college ranks and it failed miserably. It was basically an arrogant attempt to prove what the anti-NBA crowd suggested in that NBA players were all show and no substance. The complaint that NBA players were all "show boats" and egotists led to assertions that basics like breaking a press or passing the ball would be lost on them. The rest of the NBA wasted no time in humiliating the Celtics on a nightly basis.

This is virtually a zero risk but extremely high potential reward move.

If McGrady proves he's close to 100% (he'll never be McGrady of old, but if he's close he'll be a great asset to any team), you've got to know that teams will be desperate to pick him up in a trade at the deadline. But if he's close to 100%, he puts the Pistons easily into the playoffs, and depending on how this team comes together and on whether Joe can balance out the roster with one or two key trades, this team has an outside chance at being a darkhorse in the east - a team that could knock out some of the better teams in the conference.